Everwild by Neal Shusterman Page A

Witch?”
    Zin looked at Nick, then to Johnnie-O, then back to Nick again. “Who?” She looked to Kudzu, as if the dog might know the answer, but Kudzu just wagged his tail.
    Nick sighed, pretending to be exasperated, but in truth he was relieved that she had never heard of Mary. It would make educating Zin the Ripper easier.
    â€œLet’s go,” Nick said. “I’ll tell you all about Mary on the way.”
    Just then, Johnnie-O finally touched his lip and said, “Hey, where’s my Camel? What happened to my Camel?”
    â€œWhat’s he talkin’ about? I don’t see no stinkin’ camel.”
    â€œMy cig, you half-wit tomboy freak!”
    Nick ignored their bickering, turning to take one last look at the
Challenger
. Without the rickety scaffold, there was nothing at all to mask the bald-faced fact that the shuttle was fixed in midair, resting on the invisible memory of its launchpad. Memory in Everlost was a far greater force than gravity. It could hold a thousand-ton spacecraft in the air, and could slowly turn a kid to chocolate.
    â€œWhat’ll I do without my Camel?” whined Johnnie-O.
    â€œMaybe Zin can rip you a nicotine patch,” said Nick. He had already begun to consider quite a few other things Zin might do with her powers as well—but they were things he wasn’t ready to share with anyone—at least not yet.
    â€œI wouldn’t rip you the time of day,” Zin said to Johnnie-O, and added “sir,” as snidely as she could.
    â€œProb’ly because you can’t tell time,” Johnnie-O spat back.
    Nick tried to keep his laughter to himself. Clearly Johnnie-O and Zin were a match made in heaven, so he let them squawk freely at each another as they set off, leaving behind the great spacecraft that stood in patient anticipation, forever pointing toward the stars.

PART TWO
Dancing with the Deadlies
In her book
Everything Mary Says Is Wrong
, Allie the Outcast has this to say about the criminal arts:
“Skinjacking, and ecto-ripping, along with all the other so-called ‘criminal arts,’ are not criminal at all when in the hands of someone with a brain and a conscience. Calling them criminal arts is just one more way Mary Hightower puts a negative spin on things beyond her control.”

CHAPTER 8
Treasures of the Flesh
    The living world was habit-forming to a skinjacker. There was no question about that. Allie tried to limit her skinjacking to the times she absolutely had to, but she only had so much self-control. The pull of the living world was hard to resist, and got harder each time she jumped into a fleshie.
    The girl she now skinjacked was about her age, maybe a year older, with drab clothes, tight shoes, bad teeth, and acne. She was not someone you’d particularly notice if she suddenly became possessed by a different girl.
    Allie had skinjacked her in a music store, and now stood a block away at a newsstand, on the small main street of Abingdon, Virginia. Allie’s purpose was research. With all the time that had passed since she had left the living world, she had lost track of things. Who had won the last two World Series? What was the state of global warming? What movies had she missed and what bands were at the top of the charts? This was the reason for today’s skinjacking. That’s what she told Mikey. That’s what she told herself.
    So she stood at the newsstand, scouring variousnewspapers and magazines, but as she did, she found herself completely uninterested in news of the living world. What interested her more were all the things she could feel in this borrowed body. The consciousness of the girl who owned it had been easily pushed down into mental steerage, leaving Allie to luxuriate in her senses. An unexpected heat wave had rolled into Western Virginia, and the humidity that might have been oppressive to the living, was wonderful to Allie. Feeling the warmth, feeling herself